


Here and Now

by dragons_and_angels



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post Epilogue, birthday fic, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_and_angels/pseuds/dragons_and_angels
Summary: Harry would never stop being grateful for his loved ones celebrating his birthday with him, but the ones who couldn't be there would always be on his mind.





	Here and Now

**Author's Note:**

> This was a Harry and Ginny birthday fic that just a little late :D The prompt was 'A regular birthday for Ginny and Harry where they show their love for one another' and had to include 'several sunlit days'. Two is several right? 
> 
> Hints of James Sirius/Scorpius because it's me and I couldn't resist.

When you had kids, things started to revolve around them far more. You were still your own person but you were also 'Mum' or 'Dad', a person whose sole purpose was to care for your children. Kids had far more immediate needs and sometimes your own just fell to the wayside. Birthdays were one such example - you spent hours thinking about what to do for your kid's birthday, who to invite, how to create a birthday they would love and enjoy, that when your own birthday came around, you were grateful for a bit of a lie in and a slice of cake.

Harry thought about this when he realised his birthday was tomorrow and he hadn't really thought about it except for some vague musing that he'll be thirty-nine tomorrow. He was older than his parents, Sirius or Remus had ever been.

There was the sound of an explosion from upstairs and Ginny yelled from the sitting room. "Kids, if you've blown up your lamp again, you can sit in the dark for the rest of the summer!"

"Sorry, Mum!" Albus called down the stairs contrite, while James and Lily laughed.

Harry grinned as he finished brewing his cup of tea. No chance for melancholy around here when there were three teenagers to remind you to get out of your head. Well, two teenagers and a pre-teen but Lily was already causing more trouble than James and Albus put together and Harry dreaded what she was going to be like in a couple of years.

He went into the sitting room to find Ginny surrounded by bits of stray parchment and three Daily Prophets. She had her own study but preferred to spread out all around the house, her favourite places being the rug in front of the fireplace, the kitchen table or the spare bedroom.

"Hey, Gin," he said and was rewarded with a smile. He sat down on a clear bit of floor next to her and kissed her on the cheek. She turned to him, her quill behind her ear and a smudge of ink on her face.

"You seem to be in a good mood," she said, wrinkling her nose at him in amusement. "Kisses and everything."

"You say that like I never kiss you!" Harry tried to sound indignant but was far too content to get it right. This was what he wanted - a life of his own, with a house that spoke of comfort and family in every inch of it. Ginny taking a break from her work to tease him, his kids talking upstairs, their owl hooting gently from the kitchen as she bounced around the kitchen more than Pig did when he was young, the sun streaming from the windows. It was his birthday tomorrow and if he could spend the day exactly like this, he would be content.

"Well, I would always like more kisses from you." Ginny leaned closer and Harry smiled as he copied her. A second before their lips touched, there was an almighty crash from upstairs.

"HE'S MY FRIEND!" Al bellowed, loud enough to be heard clearly from the floor below.

"IT'S YOUR FAULT FOR READING MY MAIL!" James matched his brother's volume. It was like he and Albus were yelling from opposite ends of the Quidditch pitch despite, Harry was sure, being in the same room.

"SHUT UP!" Lily shrieked, reaching a decibel which had Harry wincing even as he rested his head against Ginny's, their kiss forestalled for a moment.

"Let's have three kids, Ginny, that way they'll always have someone to play with," Ginny said in a mocking tone. "Three's a good number, Ginny."

"To be fair, it's James and Albus causing the havoc right now," Harry said.

"Just you wait," Ginny said darkly. "You haven't caught sight of some of Lily's plans for Hogwarts."

Harry was going to worry about that but there was another crash and the sound of glass breaking from upstairs.

"MUM!" Albus yelled.

"DAD!" James echoed him.

"I have an article due," Ginny said apologetically and Harry nodded. She said her deadline was coming up and so she was doing a big push to try and get the main bulk of it done. He paused as he started to get up and then leaned in for a quick kiss, his heart beating faster at the feel of Ginny beneath him. That would never get old.

He pulled away and finally managed to get upstairs to deal with his bickering children. They were in James' room, James and Albus on either side of his bed, their poses mirroring each other and Lily was frowning down at her astronomical model which showed all the stars in the sky. She had been interested in the stars ever since she found out Sirius and his whole family had been named after the stars and had received the model the first Christmas after she had gone to Hogwarts. Now it lay in two pieces on the desk.

Ignoring his sons for the moment, who had started to yell their sides of the story as soon as he came in, Harry went over to his daughter. Lily looked defiant, but in a way which looked like she was on the brink of tears. While it was easy enough to see who their sons took after, James was far more like Ginny the older he got and Ginny said Albus was astonishingly like Harry, Lily was a different matter. Harry was always reminded forcefully of Ginny when she was Lily's age, quiet and innocent before Tom Riddle got a hold of her, while Ginny said Lily was very like Harry at times, mood swings and all.

"Hey, Lils," Harry said quietly. His sons were smart enough that when they realised their father was ignoring them, they fell silent and went back to glaring at each other. "Do you want me to fix that for you?" Lily had an independent streak which Harry said was all Ginny and Ginny said was Harry's fault.

"Yes, please," she answered quietly. "I jumped when James and Al started yelling and I broke it." She dashed away a tear with an angry swipe of her hand.

"_Reparo_." Harry tapped his wand on the model and the glass flew back into place and fused together, good as new. When he glanced at his sons, he saw them looking honestly contrite. Albus looked like someone had kicked a puppy in front of him while James looked red-faced and sulky, like he knew he was in the wrong.

"Sorry about your model, Lily," Albus said quietly.

"Yeah, Lils. We didn't mean to break it," James added, not wanting to be outdone by his brother. Lily smiled at the two of them and when Harry urged her out of the room, she went with a wave to both her brothers. They waved back because Lily's adoration of the two of them went both ways.

"Right." Harry straightened up. "Albus, you go first." Then he had to put up his hand to halt James' inevitable protest. "James, if you want a chance to speak, let Al go first."

"James is writing to Scorpius," Albus blurted out and Harry blinked. That hadn't been what he had been expecting. "He's my friend, James can't just steal him away."

"I'm not trying to steal him," James retorted but fell silent at Harry's look.

"He's got loads of friends, why does he have to come after mine?" Albus looked unhappy and James stared at his brother like he had never seen him before.

"Er... I don't think that is what James is intending." Harry definitely hadn't been expecting this but Ron had warned him about James' lingering looks at Scorpius Malfoy when he visited last summer. They had been so young that Harry hadn't paid much mind to it but now it was a year later and it looked like James was trying to befriend Scorpius as someone other than his best mate's brother.

"Dad!" James' cheeks had gone the same red as his hair and Albus blinked at him.

"No Quidditch until the weekend for the noise and breaking Lily's model," Harry said quickly. His sons both looked at him, absolutely horrified, but it was only two days. "You can use that time to talk about this. Quietly. And Albus, don't read James' mail."

He left James' bedroom and walked downstairs, his mind full of implications about James, Albus and Scorpius. He had been bracing himself for Albus and Scorpius, the boys had seemed as close as he and Ron when they were in school, except there were no Dark Lords to cause that closeness and no Hermione to counterbalance it, but James and Scorpius? That would take a while to get his head around.

Ginny wasn't in the sitting room anymore but when Harry went through to the kitchen, she greeted him with a kiss and a mug of hot chocolate. It was a warm July day, but she had covered the hot chocolate in whipped cream, marshmallows and chocolate flakes.

"It's July," Harry said in bemusement as he looked at the cup.

"So? You like hot chocolate and you just dealt with our screaming hellions. That deserves a treat." Ginny lead him out into the garden where they sat down on the swinging bench, which started to rock itself.

Harry took a sip of his hot chocolate to find it the perfect temperature. Ginny wasn't great at cooking but she made the best hot chocolate. "James is writing to Scorpius Malfoy."

"Oh?" Ginny took a sip of her drink, a strawberry milkshake if Harry was guessing correctly.

"No, Gin. He's writing to him." And he saw her visibly get the idea. Her eyebrows went up and she glanced back at the house.

"I wasn't expecting that," she said. "Albus, yes, but James, not so much."

"Me too. Albus is upset with James but I don't know whether it's out of jealousy or hurt they didn't tell him." Harry pulled Ginny over to him and she settled into the crook of his arm like she belonged there. Harry never got tired of feeling her weight against him and smelling her hair, the same flowery scent from Amortentia so long ago.

"Probably both. You know Albus has never liked James touching his toys and Scorpius is his best friend. I think he would be jealous of anyone Scorpius started to like and the fact that it's his older brother, the one everything comes so easy to, would only make it worse." Ginny's hand rested on Harry's knee and she rubbed her thumb against the cool fabric of his robes.

"I thought Scorpius liked Rose." Harry couldn't keep up with his immediate family's relationships, let alone extended family and friends of friends. However, he had certainly heard enough of the subject from Ron as he had muttered darkly about how he always knew Draco Malfoy had a thing for Hermione.

"Apparently Rose lost her temper with him," Ginny said, her voice lowering like she was sharing a big secret. Harry took a sip of his hot chocolate and wondered if he should point out that for someone who hated gossip, Ginny did a lot of it herself. "She told Hermione that she had yelled at Scorpius that they might have been friends if it wasn't for his creepy pining of her and that she wasn't interested in someone who didn't take no for an answer. Al had a screaming row with Rose afterward and then Scorpius had yelled at Albus for getting involved."

"Poor kid," Harry said and wasn't sure which one to apply it to. "You date one Weasley-Potter, you date them all."

"You make us sound like a cult," Ginny said, her voice filled with amusement as warm as the sun shining down on them.

"He should know what he's getting into." Harry watched as one of the gnomes scurried across the garden, Ginny's cat screeching in terror and running the other way.

"So brave, Puck. Much courage," Ginny said to the cat, heavily sarcastic. "Anyway, the question is, will Scorpius like James in return?"

Harry hummed in thought. "Knowing James, he's probably just making conversation and trying to build some kind of relationship with Scorpius outside of Al. He's brave in everything else, James, but not when it comes to this. Don't you remember how he moaned about Jeffery Davies going out with Millie Derebottom for ages and when Albus asked if he had actually said anything to Jeffery about going out, he clammed up?"

"That sounds like something I could relate to," Ginny said. "Al, on the other hand, is brave in this. Not quite kissing someone in full view of everyone in the House brave, but enough that he won't understand James hesitating. He'll probably tell Scorpius before James will, if he gets annoyed enough."

Harry laughed and put his empty cup down to pull his wife closer. The empty cup of milkshake dropped to the ground, bouncing on the grass, as Harry finally got the kiss he had missed downstairs.

**

On his birthday, Harry woke up to his wife holding a cup of tea and the Daily Prophet. He sat up and took both from her before accepting a kiss.

"Happy birthday, love," Ginny said, the rare use of a pet name making Harry smile. She climbed up onto the bed beside him. "We have at least two hours before any of our children stir. I wonder what we could do in those two hours." She shimmied out of her nightgown and Harry quickly dumped the tea and the newspaper on the bedside table and reached for his wife.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Ginny's body had changed over the years, stretched and widened and softened in ways she wasn't so pleased about. But the freckles that decorated her shoulder were still the same, the warmth of her legs around Harry's waist was still the same and her lips still tasted the same as when he had kissed her in Gryffindor Common Room.

Harry smoothed a hand up his wife's leg after they had finished, enjoying the feel of her skin underneath his hands. Ginny had given up on shaving her legs right around the time she retired from Quidditch, saying she no longer cared since the only opinion she cared about was Harry's and if he had a problem with it he could sod off. It meant her legs were covered with a fine layer of red hair which felt textured underneath Harry's hand. 

Ginny stirred and flopped onto her back. She always liked to nap after sex and Harry liked to watch her sleep, especially when she was dreaming. "Harry," she murmured sleepily. "You feeling me up again?"

"How can I resist?" Harry kissed her shoulder and both of them smiled at each other. There was a thump on the stairs.

"Al, James," Lily's voice was clear through the closed door. It looked like their kid-free reprieve was over. Harry sighed.

"Better get up," Ginny said. "If Albus barges in here like James, we won't hear the end of the 'I've been traumatised' comments." James had only been eleven but he had known how to milk something like that. Between his horrified, very put on wails and Albus and Lily's confused questions, Harry had a fresh fear of the kids walking in on them. You would think it would stop when the kids got older but as he and Ginny had discovered, their kids liked to pretend their parents weren't their own people and most definitely didn't have sex outside of the necessary act to conceive the three of them.

Harry slid on his sleep trousers and picked up his tea, warming charm still intact, and the Daily Prophet. Ginny put her dressing gown on and headed over to their bathroom, yawning as she did so. Harry was four pages into the newspaper (he liked to read it far more thoroughly than he had in his fifth year) when his bedroom door banged open.

"Knock, please," he said mildly. Albus knocked on the door jamb and Harry looked up to see the three of them beaming at him, a laden breakfast tray being held by Lily.

"Happy Birthday!" Lily handed him the tray and the three of them sat on the bed, thankfully on top of the blanket. Three cards were stacked by the teapot, their presents inside of them in a Potter children tradition that Harry had been delighted to encourage. Each of his kids would write him a message and suggest an activity or day that they could do with Harry. It meant Harry spent a day with each of his kids and reconnect after they had been away at Hogwarts for nine months, which was really all he wanted from his kids as a birthday present

"Thanks, guys." Harry picked up a slice of toast. "I'm going to wait for your mum to come back before I open your cards." Three disappointed faces were directed at him but he stood his ground. "What's the plan for today?"

"Family lunch," Albus said. He was dressed for the day and looked extraordinarily neat, apart from his hair which stuck up in the back like Harry's did. "At Gabrielle's." Fleur's sister had moved here three years ago to open a British chain of her restaurant and had never really left. Fleur regularly complained about Gabrielle leading her children astray but appeared delighted to have someone who understood 'the proper way of cooking'.

"Sounds good." Harry chewed on his toast. Gabrielle always gave them a private room, no matter how he protested, and made him feel guilty if he refused. Harry did like eating out with his family without being gawked at but it did feel a little like using his fame to get things. Gabrielle said it was because he pulled her out of the lake but Ginny always said it was because Gabrielle was hoping the two of them would have a noisy break-up in her restaurant and she could swoop in and comfort Harry. His children still looked like they had something to say and could barely wait for Harry to finish his mouthful of toast. "What is it?" he asked.

Albus started babbling something which Harry had trouble following at the best of times but after an early morning and early morning sex, his mind was working slowly than normal.

"Al wants to invite Scorpius over," James said, cutting off his brother neatly. Albus shot him a glare but then turned his attention on waiting on Harry for an answer. Ginny chose that moment to come out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around her hair and bathrobe on.

"Hi, kids." She seemed unsurprised to see them but then again, their voices did carry. She walked over to the bed and drew Harry into a sweet kiss. "Hi."

"Hi," Harry parroted back, helpless to do anything but smile back at her while their kids made gagging noises in the background.

"Didn't you get too old for that ten years ago?" James muttered and this had Harry and Ginny laughing.

"We'll remind you of that when you're thirty-nine," Harry said. Ginny sat next to him on the bed and he helped himself to some more toast. "Al wants to invite Scorpius over."

"Can I, please? I want to talk to him about James." Albus' words had a predictable effect.

"You are not talking to him about me!" James looked panicked. "Unless he wants to and that's different but you're not to bring it up!"

Harry, Ginny and Lily ignored this mini argument with the ease of long practice. "Scorpius can come over after lunch. Not before."

"Open our cards now, please, Dad!" Lily said and this seemed to draw Albus and James away from their argument.

Harry opened Lily's card first, her purple envelope releasing glitter onto the bed as soon as he opened it. Ginny looked at the purple spots on their duvet with wry resignation as she took the towel off her hair.

"Ms Patil said a little sparkle never hurt anyone," Lily defended her choice as Harry read his birthday card from her. A day out in Muggle London, just the two of them whenever he had time off work over the next month. Lily was as fascinated with Muggle culture as her grandfather and Harry had enjoyed rediscovering Muggle life with his daughter.

"I'm looking forward to it, Lils." Harry gave her a hug which was gladly returned. "I'm guessing you already have some plans?"

"Of course." Lily smiled sunnily up at him, a grin that reminded Harry more of Fred and George than anything.

"Open mine next!" Albus said and Harry did so. Albus had picked a day at the beach for the two of them. After Harry had hugged and thanked his son, he opened James' card to find his oldest son had picked a day shopping in Hogsmeade.

When he had thanked them all and eaten his breakfast, the kids deserted the two of them to get ready for lunch (and probably argue more about Scorpius). Harry finished his cup of tea as Ginny read through each birthday card.

"Merlin, this is them all over. Albus is taking you reconnecting with nature with no one else around, Lily surrounded by Muggles and James surrounded by magical people so he can talk about Quidditch and magic with no worries about who's going to overhear." Ginny shook her head and cuddled up to Harry. "We have the best kids."

Harry kissed her and when he pulled back, he didn't go far. When he sat in bed with his wife as they listened to their kids cause havoc, he remembered his fifteen year old self who had just heard the prophecy for the first time and couldn't see anything past Voldemort and felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

"You thinking about the war?" Ginny asked quietly. That was one of the ways they worked. Their life may be happy now but neither of them forgot the hardships they had to go through to get here.

"Just thinking about if I could show my sixteen-year-old self this moment, he wouldn't believe it," Harry replied honestly and he gave the smallest shrug. "And some part of me is always that teenager who didn't think he would survive Voldemort."

"I get that." Ginny stretched out her legs on top of the cover and reached out to hold Harry's hand, her thumb stroking over his wedding ring. "Do you want to go and see your parents and Sirius today?"

"Maybe this evening." His parents and godfather had been buried in the same graveyard, even though Sirius had no body to bury. "I'm happy, I am. I love you and the kids but... "

"But you'll never be able to use the Mirror of Erised as a normal mirror," Ginny finished, summing up his thoughts into words so well. "It's okay. I know you're here with us, rather than living in the past. It's okay to wish they were here."

Harry hugged her and buried his face in her hair, inhaling her flowery scent. He smiled as he heard something crash onto the floor upstairs and raised voices. His kids always knew the best way to break up a serious moment. "I love you, Gin."

"Love you too, Harry."

With an unspoken agreement, the two of them spent another few minutes just holding each other. Their children were upstairs, happy and alive and safe, but they took some time to be Harry and Ginny, rather than Mum and Dad.

Such things were worth it.


End file.
